


mother kiss me cheek and chin

by maplemood



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Past Infidelity, Post-Canon, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 11:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19700782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: “I’d have walked out on my own.” She shakes, furious. “And I wouldn’t have come back. I’d never come back.”“That so?” Persephone bends to set her bag down, the glass bottles stuffed inside it clattering, chattering together. “You’d walk up on out of here, you’d be happy. Free as a bird without your Orpheus.”My Orpheus.“Freer than you,” Eurydice snaps, ‘cause if Persephone can twist the knife so can she, so can she.





	mother kiss me cheek and chin

They meet on the station platform, one headed up, one already sent plummeting back down. The Lady of the Underground looks flush and alive, her eyes bright, her long hair pouring loose again. She has her spring-green dress on and her straw bag hooked over one arm. Eurydice has half a song snagged in her throat and a heart in pieces in her chest. 

Persephone sighs. “Damn fool boy,” she says, soft and sad and unsurprised. Between her and her husband, Eurydice figured Persephone at least would be surprised. 

“You knew.” Her voice is poison. What’s she got left to lose, anyway? What? “You knew he’d fail.”

“Ain’t a prophet, am I? I knew he’d try.”

“He wasn’t strong enough. You  _ knew _ he wasn’t strong.” Nothing, is what, and all Eurydice sees, all that rises up in her eyes is Orpheus with his stupid boyish face gone milk-white and ghost-scared, Orpheus falling to his knees as she fell to hers and the ground swallowed Eurydice whole. The ground thick and black and she like so much water sucked back into it, into loam just starting to warm with the turning of spring, and she can’t breathe, can’t hold the bones and meat of herself together anymore, can’t— “I’d have walked out on my own.” She shakes, furious. “And I wouldn’t have come back. I’d never come back.”

“That so?” Persephone bends to set her bag down, the glass bottles stuffed inside it clattering, chattering together. “You’d walk up on out of here, you’d be happy. Free as a bird without your Orpheus.”

_ My Orpheus. _ “Freer than you,” Eurydice snaps, ‘cause if Persephone can twist the knife so can she, so can she. 

The goddess’s eyes darken. “There ain’t a soul on this earth free like you want to be free,” she says. Clips those words to a warning. “We all got somebody holding us down.”

“Holding you down in the dirt. Did he make you sign away your soul, too?” Eurydice stands a pretty good chance of being struck down here and now, what’s left of her, fading gray flesh blown to a pile of ash. Hell, she’ll take it. Take it in a heartbeat over the remembering. “When he married you, did he write that into the contract?”

_ Papers to be signed. Step into my office.  _ She’s remembering his hard face and his neat hard handwriting, Mr. Hades guiding her to where she had to sign; Eurydice’s remembering the scratch of the pen, cool between her fingers. Fumbling to put it away, Mr. Hades plucking it from her fumbling hands.  _ Come here, _ he said, and didn’t she obey without a thought, didn’t she force every thought out of her head. Orpheus alone up top, calling and searching for her. Persephone across the factory floor, tears glittering hard in her eyes.

Persephone who snorts now, dry-eyed. “Girl,” she says, Queen of the Underworld and Lady of Summer,  _ who are you to ask me anything, who are you to stay my hand, _ “I gave it away.”

Eurydice stares at her a while, long while stretching into an age, breathless, panting, shivering on the creaking platform in the shadow of the creaking train. She stares, and she says, all spiteful wonder, “How do you bear it?”

Persephone’s lips quirk at one corner. “Same as you will,” she says, not a little spiteful herself. 

“I can’t.”

“You ain’t got a choice.”

“I can’t,” Eurydice repeats. “I can’t carry him,” she snarls—if she had would it’ve been any different, would she have walked the road from hell shouldering Orpheus’s doubt for him, shook the soil off her boots and never looked back?  _ My Orpheus, _ her Orpheus—she shivers almost to tears.

“Don’t.” Either Persephone’s moved close or Eurydice’s moved closer to Persephone, close enough to smell the dusty whiffs of summer heat radiating from her. Got the same spice it had in summer, that heat, in the fields when Persephone spun Eurydice into the dance. Heady green must, the smell of growing things. “Can’t carry a man’s heart for him,” Persephone says, softer but not soft. “You hold it,” she says, like that’s such a simple thing. 

“No.”

“Here. And here.” The Queen of the Underworld’s got brown fingertips calloused like a farmer’s. Before Eurydice can duck away she touches them to her forehead, her throat. “Here,” Persephone says, reaching lower, her hand hovering over Eurydice’s belly. “Feel that weight, girl? That pull?”

“I don’t want it.” Her hands ball to fists. 

“Been feeling it your whole life,” Persephone says without one bit of sympathy. “You can hold it or you can let it drag you down, but you can’t get rid of it. He’s yours and you’re his, girl, always have been, always will be. That’s the way of the world. It don’t bend for the likes of you.”

_ “I don’t want it,” _ says Eurydice, shivering gone to trembling, Orpheus on his knees, Orpheus calling, calling, and her eyes blink wet and she glares, glares ‘till Persephone huffs impatiently and reaches out again, cups her hand to Eurydice’s cheek. 

“Don’t even bend for the likes of  _ me.  _ Hold still,” she says, businesslike, and dips her chin and presses her lips to Eurydice’s forehead. They lay a heavy weight there, weight layered over the lingering heat of her touch. Lay a heavier weight on the hollow of Eurydice’s throat; the skin of her throat shivers and she gasps—can’t help it—and Persephone, rolling her eyes, sinks to her knees and kisses Eurydice’s belly, sets warmth blooming in its very pit. Steadying weight, weight all the same.

Weight like the heave of Orpheus’s body over hers, Eurydice thinks, like the press of his arms around her in the night. She stares down at the goddess’s head, at her bronzey curls caught full of sunlight, and she doesn’t say a word. 

‘Cause Persephone is a goddess after all, and this ain’t any kind of mercy. “Something to keep you ‘till you can stand on your own,” she says, rocking back on her knees. She wipes her lips where they’ve pressed to the grimy fabric of Eurydice’s coveralls. “Keep your feet planted.”

“I can’t bear it,” Eurydice says, stubborn even as her eyes dry. Summery heat boils inside her.

Persephone gets to her feet. Gracefully, somehow. “Hell, darling, didn’t you bear my husband? Didn’t you just bear me?” She smooths her skirt, looks at Eurydice. “You’ll bear whatever you’ve got coming. You know that.”

She leaves her on the platform with a belly full of warm lead, hot blood flushing her cold, gray skin. She leaves Eurydice with Orpheus’s face and Orpheus’s touch rooted in her heart and half a song spun out from the puffing rush of the train, a song that, given time, might just swell to change the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Young Man in America" by Anaïs Mitchell.


End file.
